


Ma Mort, Ma Vie

by reidrights



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: (but neither of them will admit how they truly feel), (or so Spencer thinks), Alexa Lisbon (mentioned) - Freeform, Bisexual Derek Morgan, Bisexual Spencer Reid, Dilaudid, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, Tobias Hankel (Mentioned) - Freeform, Unrequited Love, Whump, past bullying, post-Revelations, s2e15: Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27291991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reidrights/pseuds/reidrights
Summary: “Ever since Hankel?” asks Derek, tracing down the sliver of skin Spencer dared expose, even that ashen. Derek takes his silence as a silent yes, but the guilt of a lie he never told numbs him further. Spencer doesn’t know how to tell him that Hankel was just the tipping point, that this was a long time coming. So he says nothing.---Spencer struggles, post-kidnapping. Then again, he's been struggling since he was twelve.
Relationships: Derek Morgan & Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid, Moreid - Relationship
Comments: 10
Kudos: 111





	Ma Mort, Ma Vie

He’s _cold_ \-- the sort of deceiving cold that snaps through and settles, not like ice, but like the lidocaine that sits on his skin. If only there was an over-the-counter solution to this coldness worming through his heart. _God_ , he’s cold, despite the fleecy fabric of Derek’s jumper that he stretches to envelop his fingers and slouches in to cover his neck, and the unsavory uppercut of sun that scalds his skin but leaves his insides just the same.

_Maybe he should just eat the lidocaine stuff,_ he thinks. His most absurd thought yet, he knows, but it’s seventy-five degrees out and sunny and he’s alone in his apartment with his two companions, the Angel and the Devil. 

It’s absurd, he knows, as absurd anything as of late, but it comforts him in a way. The Angel, that numbing cream which soothes the flesh of his forearm, promising that _it’ll all be okay, just you wait._ And then it would consort with the Devil, the needles strewn beneath his bed next to vials. The Angel is always there before the Devil arrives to take him away.

Spencer isn’t religious. Ask him any other time, and he’d have a host of reasons as to his disbelief in deities. He still isn’t, and yet the thought never leaves. _Sinner. He’s a sinner. He deserved this._ And it all clashes against his team’s reassurance that _he isn’t_ and _Hankel cannot break you_ and _he’s stronger than this_ , and he _so very much_ wants to listen but just _can’t._ His team’s words present themselves, lulling till they are no longer words, only a mere jumble of syllables devoid of meaning. Unlike Hankel’s insistent declarations, loud and clear, of who he, Spencer, _had_ or _hadn’t_ been. _Had been_ a sinner, _hadn’t been_ the golden boy everyone said he was, and he’d known it all along.

His nails, bitten down to serrated stubs, bury themselves in his hair. Try as he might, he’s not strong enough to rip it out, watch the blood pool beneath his fingertips, down his head, and feel something. _Anything_ , except this feeling so great he cannot feel at all, cannot think, cannot do anything except sit beneath the window of his apartment.

_I’m crying_ , he realizes, and it’s almost funny how it took him this long to notice the salty tears mingle with drops of sweat at the collar of his sweater. _I’m sweating, too. It’s hot. It’s so hot._ And at once, he’s no longer cold -- just _scalding_ , so much so that even when he rips off the sweater and tosses it aside, scoots away from pointed stream of sun, he’s still feverish, so his dampened hands grip at his desk and half-drag him under, into the solace of the little nook.

Last he’d done this, he was twelve -- drowning in humiliation and his own tears, wishing nothing more than to crawl into the library and bury what had happened beneath piles and piles of books until it was an insignificant memory among many. But it closed at two, and it was five. There was nowhere to hide except home.

_Daddy?_ He’d whimpered as they snapped pictures of him, lanky and etiolated with limbs bound so tight, he was sure to have marks for days. How they’d laughed, the football lot, and Alexa, with the widest grin of all. It’s this day that he realizes the devils lie in heaven as they do in hell.

_Devils,_ again. Less than twenty-four-hours and he now thinks like a religious zealot.

_Daddy won’t save you,_ crooned one of the boys in the back, eliciting a bout of raucous laughter from the group. They were right. Daddy _had_ left, he knew, yet in his desperation, he would have forgiven even _him_ if it meant this punishment would end.

_Why are you doing this?_ he’d cried, and Alexa had said, _‘cause you’re one of_ **_them_ ** _, those sinners, those...gays._ The worst part wasn’t their subsequent jeers, egged on by her diatribe after diatribe. Rather, the blank stares of those, lurking near the back, sparing a glance of pity and ducking their heads as they passed. Those hurt. _Why didn’t you stop them? Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you?_

He went home that night, shivering, ligature marks strewn all across his arms and legs and torso. Diana slept all the while, only waking when he tried to pour a glass of water but spilled it since his hands shook so much. “Crash,” she sighed, peering out from her bedroom. Her eyes fell towards his wounds, towards the way his knees withdrew to his chest beneath the kitchen table and she asked, “Recess was rough?” Except it’s a suggestion, not a question -- even the lightness in her step, the relaxed pitter-patter as she approached saying so.

Spencer swallowed. “Yeah,” he lied. “Yeah, it was rough.” He hadn’t gone to recess in eight years.

The quarterback had since reached out to apologize, and Spencer’d dismissed him with a simple _it’s fine._

_Really?_ he’d responded, light returning to his expression.

_Yeah,_ insisted Spencer, because _grudges aren’t healthy, Reid. You need to let go._

He couldn’t.

_Fucking bastard, working as a judge. Is this our legal system?_

The doorbell rings, once, twice, then replaced by Derek’s voice filtering through Spencer’s since-neglected doorway to society. Shut since Hankel. Since, he thinks, he was twelve, retreating to his own world for hours at a time.

At last, Spencer musters the energy to slump towards the door, shove on his sweater, invite his _friend_ in. Derek just stares for a moment, extending his hand towards Spencer, who accepts it. He’s the only one he lets in anymore. Not JJ, not Hotch, not _anyone_ else. 

Every time Derek leaves, it hurts more -- the constant contrariety of finding comfort in his presence, yet breaking in two at each _kid_ or worse, _I love you. You know that, right?_. He almost wishes Derek got the memo to _lighten-the-fuck-up, hell, call him Pretty Boy or something_ , because that, at the very least, shot a vertiginous warmth through him. Reciprocated or not.

Derek loves him. He loves Derek. But he’s _in love with_ him, while Derek just _loves who he is, the times they’ve spent together,_ all these variations with none being the same sort of love as Spencer feels. Right? He figured that if (not that it would happen) Derek was _in love with him_ , he would say, _I am in love with you_. 

He hadn’t, so Spencer figured, he didn’t. That doesn’t stop every single shrapnel of his ruined mind from reading into Derek’s every move. _Fuck_ , he swears, because no other word feels appropriate at how aghast he feels, at this sudden wave of self-awareness. _Fuck, this is weird. Why am I --_ and the burning shame returns, that knowledge he shouldn’t count the number of blinks or breaths per minute Derek takes or psychoanalyze his shifts in tone and syntax.

And Derek, he traces along the slopes and ridges of the back of Spencer’s hands, to the juncture between skin and pallid crescents on his nails. Then along his palm, the arch etched by lines, the type that prophets read. It didn’t take one to see how unlucky he was, when he clasped so weak a fist it was better he lay at life’s mercy than the pretend to fight at all. Sooner bone than human, to be carved and excavated from his misery while sinking, by the soles of his feet, into the ground. 

_I can’t do this anymore,_ he admits. _I’m tired. I’m so tired. Hell, I know at least a few dozen synonyms for tired, but none of them say the same thing as what I mean._ That simplicity, which lends itself to his truth.

Tentative, Derek wraps his arms around Spencer, who nearly collapses into his embrace. 

“There’s this…” Spencer trails off, feeling very stupid at what he almost said. _Fucking nerd._

“Go on,” encourages Derek. That’s all the prompting he needs.

“There’s this saying I read by one of my favorite authors. Maurice Scève. He says, _En sa beauté gît ma mort et ma vie_ . In her beauty rests my death and my life. And that last part...it’s always stuck with me. _Ma mort, ma vie._ My death, my life. I don’t know why, it’s just...” He doesn’t know what else to say. How to explain that death and life feel indistinct. How to explain that light he’d approached before it flickered out to Tobias’s frantic movements, resuscitating him without mercy. And how he’d almost asked him to stop, to _please, just let him be at peace_ , because he could not endure any longer. 

Derek just smiles, a sad sort of smile that reciprocates shadows, does not paint them with light.

Then he, Spencer, says it. The thing that’s been on his mind.

“Derek?” And by the look he gives him, Spencer knows that Derek’s filled in the blanks already. Added words to shadows, and made them all the more real.

“I’m thinking of ending things.”

_Ma mort, ma vie_.

“Ever since…” He can’t finish his sentence, coming to terms with this never-ending _ache_ , the coldness, the searing heat, everything that is to be found in nothing.

“Ever since Hankel?” asks Derek, tracing down the sliver of skin Spencer dared expose, even that ashen. Derek takes his silence as a silent _yes_ , but the guilt of a lie he never told numbs him further. Spencer doesn’t know how to tell him that Hankel was just the tipping point, that this was a long time coming. So he says nothing.

_Six feet below,_ he says. 

_Six feet below,_ repeats Derek, fil de voce. _Six feet below, but that’s six feet closer to air and damp earth, sodden with tears, beneath your feet. Six feet more till you reach the surface and your hands claw at the dirt, rejuvenated._

He’s right.

_The shade is still Spencer’s friend, as is the enclosed space beneath the desk, the table. Sun breaches his comfort, an unnatural warmth that threatens to sear what is left of him beyond salvation._

_Yet perhaps, one day, he'll tell Derek the full truth. He loves him in the way that friends do not. He will step out, drink in the sun, on the eve of his spring._

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> pure vent fic i wrote in a rage lol. Feedback is appreciated!


End file.
